Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian joined Frank Gaffney on Secure Freedom Radio on Friday to discuss the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill. The discussion eventually drifted, as these discussions often do, to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s work on behalf of the immigration bill.
Last week, Rubio warned that if Congress fails to pass immigration reform, President Obama might be “tempted” to issue an executive order creating a roadmap to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the country, a notion that the White House disputed.
Krikorian told Gaffney that Rubio’s warning essentially amounts to “blackmail” of conservatives and is like giving “the bank robbers money so that they don’t rob the bank.”
“Its’ really just one more step in Senator Rubio’s kind of delegitimation in the eyes of conservatives,” he said.
Gaffney: Let me just ask you a question about Marco Rubio. He has played a very important role in crafting the Senate bill and helping to sell it. He’s been kind of all over the lot. Senator Rubio has come to office as a darling of conservatives and the Tea Party; this has been horrifying to many of them, I think. He most recently, as I understand it, has said that, well, we have to pass this legislation because President Obama will – as is now his wont, increasingly – just enact or adopt or execute, if you will, amnesty if we don’t. What’s your response to Marco Rubio?
Krikorian: Yeah, that’s definitely what Senator Rubio said. Senator Rubio is basically engaging in a kind of blackmail, saying that if we don’t pass the amnesty, President Obama will just do it on his own. And instead of saying that means we should, you know, oppose any efforts on his part to unconstitutionally usurp the power of Congress, Rubio is offering that as an argument for voting for his bill. It’s basically like, you know, let’s give the bank robbers money so that they don’t rob the bank. I mean it’s just, I just don’t, I can’t imagine anybody takes this seriously, and it’s really just one more step in Senator Rubio’s kind of delegitimation in the eyes of conservatives.
Gaffney: Indeed it is. And a shame, at that, because he seemed to have such promise.
